A Story of Nebraska, 1985
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The grilled cheese had been cut corner to corner, the way Josie liked it, and by the time the Ford crossed the Missouri River at Council Bluffs one triangle of it was gone and the other was wrapped in a paper napkin and stowed in the pocket of her red parka.
Walt Brandt noticed the napkin the way he noticed most things these days, out of the side of his eye, without turning his head. He noticed the gas gauge, too, sitting a hair above a quarter, and the temperature needle, which had taken to drifting up whenever the road climbed, and the sky to the west, which had gone the flat pewter color that in November meant nothing good.
"You going to eat the rest of that, Jo?"
"Later," she said.
She was seven years old and sat on a folded quilt so she could see over the dashboard. She had her Fisher-Price tape recorder in her lap, the brown-and-orange one with the big red button, and every few miles she pressed PLAY and listened to a few seconds of the Sesame Street tape her father had sent from Wyoming, then pressed STOP again, like a person checking that a stove was off.
"It'll get cold."
"Grilled cheese is good cold."
"Is that so."
"It is so," she said, and looked at him in that measuring way she had, as though he were a page in a workbook and she was not sure yet whether he had the answer right. "Did you eat breakfast, Grandpa?"
"Ate before you were up."
"What did you eat?"
"Toast."
"There wasn't any bread. We gave the bread to Mrs. Ostrander with the other stuff from the cupboard."